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NAS Advice

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Joined
1 Aug 2003
Posts
868
I'm considering getting a Nas after many many years of thinking about one and not being able to get it due to finances.. And now here I am considering one again in probably about the worst time to get one given the storage insanity. But I do need one to be able to perform proper data backup and I can afford one now.

Anyway, I can't make my mind up between getting a 2 bay or 4 bay one. Everyone says get a 4 bay so there's headroom, which I can understand. However given the current global situation I think it changes the situation somewhat. Being a little pessimistic I'm not sure when/if we're going to see HDDs go down to an acceptable price point. Hence having a 4 bay Nas when there's little likelihood of actually being able to fill the slots, is redundant.

Currently I have a brand new 8tb 3.5inch hdd I can put in a nas. And I'm faced with using another + the nas which does drive up the overall cost. 8tb drives are just over the £300 currently. Given the price difference between 2 and 4 bay nas, I could make a fair saving going with just a 2 bay.

Anyway, does anyone here have any advice regarding making a nas choice now in todays climate?
 
If you go the diy route, you don't need the latest and greatest CPU as long as you are not expecting to use transcoding.

I built one using TrueNAS Scale 2 Years ago.

CPU - AMD Ryzen 3 3200G with Vaga GFX
RAM – 32GB 2400MHz (2*16GB)
MB - Gigabyte A520I AC
5xSeagate IronWolf 10 TB NAS Internal Hard Drive HDD
Network - Intel X540-T1 RJ45
Power supply - Be quiet 300W
Case Jonsbo n2

Obviously you do not need 32GiB of memory, 8GiB would probably do.

I think I spent about £450 for it all without the memory, HDD's, and the 10Gbps NIC is optional so that would save you an extra £50.

If you want prebuild then Asustor is a good brand.
 
A NAS is not strictly a back up, just active storage or file serving. But would certainly be looking for a four bay, even if just using two drives.
 
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